News »Browse Articles » Is having more than one boss good for you?

There is an age old maxim that says too many cooks spoil the broth. Does the same analogy hold true in the corporate world? Does having multiple bosses have an impact, negative or positive on employee productivity? Since it’s the new truism of global India, it’s time we examined this emerging phenomenon.

Chances are if you are working with multinational corporations who have set up their India office, you would have more than one boss. Your day to day functional work is supervised by someone sitting out of the same local office, but the larger strategic role is being overseen by your manager sitting out of the company’s corporate head quarter in the US. Not that this is always the case. There are instances when all your bosses are abroad with each looking at a different aspect of your role.

Let’s take the example of a person who is handling sales of software services within the banking and financial industry vertical in a large multinational company.

Chances are that he/she would be reporting to the country manager in India, who carries the final responsibility of revenues coming out of India.

It’s also likely that he would be reporting through a dotted line structure to someone who is responsible for revenues from the banking sector across Asia Pacific and also perhaps to his counterpart who is similarly responsible globally. After all, for an MNC, all revenues that India generates ultimately reflect in their global kitty. Such a reporting structure has become commonplace today across industries and is known as matrix reporting.

No soldier on the planet would like to be led by two generals. It leads to confusion and lack of clarity of their goals. Similarly in organisations , having multiple bosses can lead to problems of clarity and confusion.

These problems become more acute if rival managers are driving conflicting agendas. Having said that, organisations wouldn’t be opting for dual or multiple reporting structures if there were no benefits for the same. Let’s take our earlier example of a person handling sales within the banking sector. The country manager who is responsible for getting revenues isn’t much bothered from which vertical they are coming from. So, if the banking sector is weak for the company, chances are he would, instead of nurturing and paying attention to it, ignore it and try to milk the cash cows of the organisations. This would leave executive directionless not knowing whom to approach to solve his problems.

Source:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/5242531.cms

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